The Crown Prince Cracks

Shamed in his battlefield, Rahul has to wait till 2019

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The day the Congress lost Uttar Pradesh, Rahul Gandhi underwent yet another makeover. It was not the angry young man but a sheepish youth who met the media on the afternoon of March 6. Still sporting a beard, he said, "I led the campaign so it (the defeat) is my responsibility." And then added on a surprisingly mature note, "the result is a good lesson for me". With a pat on the back for one journalist and a wave for another, he walked back to 10 Janpath where Priyanka consoled her beaten brother with a hug.

Rahul Gandhi.

A Congress revival in Uttar Pradesh was supposed to be the first step towards Rahul's coronation as prime minister. This is the reason why he was not projected as the chief ministerial candidate in the state despite the demand from many candidates. "We were told that Rahul Gandhi was a national leader who could not be limited to one state," says a party candidate from Allahabad who lost his seat. The shame of Uttar Pradesh has put Rahul's national ambitions on hold.

Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi in Delhi on March 7.

Rahul has already shifted his war room to Gujarat. The elections in that state are due early next year, along with Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka. All three states are ruled by the BJP but it is Gujarat that will be the trophy win. If Rahul manages to wrest this state away from Narendra Modi then he will regain much of the glory he lost in Uttar Pradesh. Given the Congress's dependence on dynasty, Rahul will remain the party's star campaigner for 2014. But whether he is projected as the party's prime ministerial candidate will depend on how the Congress fares in these elections as well as the next round of polls in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan which are due at the end of 2013. If there is a repeat of the current scorecard, then it is likely that Rahul will postpone his prime ministerial ambitions to 2019 and instead opt for a Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi kind of arrangement. Already sms jokes are doing the rounds claiming that the Uttar Pradesh defeat has given Manmohan a fresh lease of political tenure. Interestingly, when asked on March 7 who would be Congress's prime ministerial candidate in 2014, Sonia Gandhi was evasive, saying, "This is 2012."

Rahul's costly blunders

"Rahul could easily have helicoptered into the prime minister's position. Instead, he chose to work from the ground and chose the most difficult terrain of all," Congress veteran Mani Shankar Aiyar told the media. He recalled how the Congress had lost Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in 1983 under the late Rajiv Gandhi's leadership. Yet Rajiv's position within the Congress remained unassailable. Similarly, no one has blamed Rahul for the current debacle. Instead, sundry Congress leaders are falling over themselves to take the blame.

Rahul has tripped before. He led the party's disastrous Bihar campaign in 2010. He is still to promote a state-level leadership there. But Uttar Pradesh was a bigger shock than Bihar. This is a state that he had made into his karmbhoomi. A Congress general secretary points out that he will soon be visiting Uttar Pradesh again and is keen to prop up a line of local leadership. According to him, Rahul is considering projecting one of the three Union ministers-RPN Singh, Jitin Prasada or Pradeep Jain-as the state Congress chief. One of the lessons Rahul has learnt from Uttar Pradesh is the importance of a credible state leader.

Akhilesh Yadav.

The current state leadership, such as it is, comprises of Congress Legislature Party leader Pramod Tewari and Pradesh Congress Committee chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi. Both cannot win a seat outside their own constituency. Explains a local Congress leader, "Ritaji knows how her father (H.N. Bahuguna) was cut to size by Indiraji. She knows how dangerous it is to be a tall leader in the Congress."

Rahul had revelled in his self-appointed role as the great saviour of the cow belt. He now knows that his hit-and-run visits to the state have not worked. What the Congress needs is a strong local leadership if it wants to make a comeback. Rahul's patronising brand of politics-promising a package for one section of Uttar Pradesh, engineering reservations for another and propping up a caste icon for a third-has clearly been rejected by the state.

The problem with Rahul is that he thinks in English and then translates his thoughts into Hindi. This is what led to the faux pas when he referred to the people of Uttar Pradesh as beggars during his November 14 rally in Phulpur. "What he meant was that Uttar Pradesh should provide enough employment opportunities so that its residents don't have to look for work outside," explains a Lucknow-based Congressman. Unfortunately, this is not quite how it sounded. Because of this communication gap, instead of creating an emotional connect with the voter, Rahul's speeches often have the air of a patronising sermon.

Sonia Gandhi has said that the problem in Uttar Pradesh was that there were "too many leaders". If Rahul wants to succeed as a party leader, he needs to re-evaluate his team of advisers. After the elections, Rahul told a select section of the media that he had wanted to be projected as the chief ministerial candidate but his party leaders advised him against it. Rahul should have just gone with his instincts instead of allowing himself to be misled. Moreover, Mayawati has pointed out that the Congress party's politics of quota only succeeded in pushing the Muslim vote firmly towards the Samajwadi Party (SP). It was Cabinet minister Salman Khurshid and senior leader Digvijaya Singh who were the proponents of this quota politics. "We only talked about 4.5 per cent reservation, the SP talked of 18 per cent. So how can you say it harmed us?" asks Digvijaya. But his trigger-happy statements made a serious dent in the Congress campaign. If it was not Digvijaya talking about imposing Governor's Rule, it was Khurshid claiming that Sonia had wept when she saw pictures of the Batla House encounter. Eager to jump onto this bandwagon, another Cabinet minister, Sriprakash Jaiswal, claimed that "Rahul could become prime minister at midnight if he so desired".

It is this kind of arrogance that the voter of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Goa and even to a great extent Uttarakhand, has rejected. The Gandhis no longer have the dynastic right to rule, not even in the pocket-boroughs of Amethi and Rae Bareli. Moreover, Rahul's angry young man persona, complete with the bearded look and rolled up kurta sleeves, puzzled the Uttar Pradesh electorate instead of galvanising them. "Amitabh Bachchan's angry young man appealed to an earlier generation. Today's youth is different and has a wider perpective," says Kesri Nath Tripathi, a BJP leader from Allahabad. Considering that this look was the brainchild of Raj Babbar, another actor from the Amitabh generation, it is not surprising he got it so wrong.

Although Sonia had kept in the background allowing her son to lead the party in the recent round of Assembly elections, the debacle has forced her to emerge from the shadows. She reprimanded Congressmen to "pull up their socks". She could have added a footnote to this sartorial advice: And stop rolling up your sleeves!